Eric Dimbleby - White Out

Marcus stood only a few feet away from her now. It felt good to know she hadn’t gotten away. She clutched her purplish hands to her ears, squinting her eyes. She was in pain, or so it seemed at first. Had the impact of the bullets against the tree been enough to damage her ears? It seemed silly to think that. She’d already played the scarecrow once, so it was possible she might play possum just as well.

The tears in her eyes, though, told another story.

He’d fucked her hearing up good. It was an extreme sort of pain and he was glad he’d served it up for her. She deserved it for what she’d done to his men.

“Ears hurt? I wasn’t even that close to you. Geezus H. Christ, I guess that’s why they call you the weaker sex, right? Get the fuck up.”

She said nothing, but she opened her eyes enough to look at him, gazing at him intently. While her lower face was held in something of a tight rictus, her eyes were smiling. Marcus felt an alarm rising in his chest for a moment, because of those eyes. Bitch was smiling with her eyes .

“Fuck are you smiling at?” he asked. He looked around him, expecting something to pop out of nowhere, like a jack-in-the-box or one of those whack-a-moles you hit in the head at the arcade. She was up to something. Marcus had seen that kind of smile on dozens of occasions, usually right before something went all unhinged. When somebody started smiling like that, it meant that they were privy to something that nobody else knew. It meant that the game was up.

Marcus inched backward, just a step or two, almost unconsciously. He looked down at his feet, disbelieving the strange fear that she created in him. Was there a deadfall beneath his feet? Had she planted a trap? He couldn’t be sure how long she’d been here, plotting to take them out. Why in the hell was she smiling?

Fuck that , he thought. Kill her kill her kill her kill her. For them, for you, for all the sons of bitches that have ever been wronged by chicks like this, for all the guys who can’t get ahead in the world because of this women’s lib bullshit, fuck it fuck fuck fuck it and kill her.

Marcus growled, shifting all of his weight in her direction, diving at her and wrapping his hands around her throat. He didn’t squeeze, but he stared right through her. “What the fuck are you smiling at? You hear me? Tell me!”

Kill her kill her kill her.

Still, no answer.

He tightened his hands now, pulling back his lips so that she could see his teeth. She smiled broader in response to this gesture, and a low giggle escaped her chest. Now she was laughing. For Chrissakes, she was laughing in his face. He spat on her cheek, just to see if it had any effect on that unnerving look.

“Stop laughing!” he blurted.

Killherkillherkillherkillherkillherkillherkillherkillherkillherkillherkillher.

Now he was fully choking her. She’d destroyed his crew, one by one, and now she was taunting him. He’d killed plenty of times before, so this was no different, but still it felt like he was losing a part of himself. The bitch had gotten the best of him, something that was traumatic in its own special way. If Dan was still alive, he would have used his favorite phrase, echoing inside of Marcus’ head like the little imp was still alive: she got yer goat, didn’t she Marcus? Got yer goat real good.

As he tightened his knuckles up around the snickering bitch’s throat, Marcus thought of the first time he killed an animal, choking the family Labrador until it sunk its baby teeth into his palm. The mutt resisted, delivering the best fight it could manage, but gave in rather quickly. Humans had a much larger fight in them Marcus found, but this tart didn’t have an iota of that. She seemed to be enjoying her death. Or enjoying something .

He loosened his hands. The grin would not leave her face.

“Gotcha,” she said, gasping for breath, still clutching her ears. “I gotcha. You don’t even know it, but I gotcha.”

“What do you—”

And then an eerie wooziness, and then a sticky red, plopping in the snow, and then the darkness.

He hadn’t realized that he was already dead by the time he’d reached her. A dead man walking, but consumed by viciousness.

She had taken another shot. She wasn’t sure how, but she’d taken another shot, and it was a perfect hit. For all she could remember between the shock of her ears ringing (ringing, hell, they were screeching) and the moment she struck the ground, she might have dropped the gun and pulled the trigger by accident. Or maybe it was blind luck. Or maybe it was a higher power. It was a stray shot, either way, and it had plugged him right in the chest.

Bang.

Baldy was dead.

It was the cold that had puzzled him so. It was so damn frigid that he hadn’t a clue that there was a bullet lodged in his chest, his body numb and in shock. Psychos like The Shiny Bald One were so out of touch with the real world that they couldn’t grasp simple concepts like “I’m hot” or “I’m cold” or “I’ve got a bullet in my chest.” So filled with rage was he that he couldn’t see anything but Annie’s face, smirking at him from the distance, goading him to finish her off.

His body slumped to the ground as a pulse of blood flowered inside of his jacket, dripping down his front side into the pristine, but well trampled on, snow.

“Good night, asshole,” she whispered, wishing her ears would stop ringing soon.

Annie stepped past The Shiny Bald One’s body. Part of her wanted to spit on his corpse for all he had done, but she retained her civility long enough to get past him, to leave him behind to rot, as he damn well deserved.

A wave of philosophical puttering drifted through her head. What made a person turn to such vulgar actions? What made a person so innately horrible? Were they born that way or did the environment (be it snow, or bad parenting, or economics) trigger it? It was an age-old question and one that Annie hadn’t the heart to consider any deeper. Regardless of how Shiny started out, she knew one thing for certain…

He was dead.

She was free.

Not just escaped, but free. Free of all the lunatics who sought to do her harm.

“I survived,” she whispered to nobody in particular, realizing that she was probably approaching the corner of Crazy and Cuckoo, slowly but surely. “I survived,” she said again, putting one foot in front of the other as she guided herself towards The Yeti and Shiny’s snowmobiles. She could only hope that there was enough gas to stretch the last mile or so to her house.

She thought: I beat those fuckers. This is the part where the cops show up and put one of those warm blankets around me. This is the part where they put me in a helicopter and fly me to safety. This is the part where the credits roll.

Annie couldn’t help the smile that kept surfacing on her face. She couldn’t be sure that Paulie and Christian were okay, but she was almost certain that they were. She’d defeated the evil-doers, and so the reward awaited her.

A gust of wind picked up, driving her backwards with a chilly blast of snow. Just enough to remind her optimism that she wasn’t quite through the ordeal yet. Still one more mile to go and anything could happen in that mile.

She looked to the milky sky, praying for that cinematic helicopter to take her this last stretch.

No luck. The usually helpful cops were in their houses, abandoning the duty to protect and serve. The police department in her town probably had one or two snowmobiles and they were most likely being put to use with selfish purposes. The world’s rescuers had all run away, tucking their tails between their legs and thinking only about number one. They couldn’t be blamed though—this storm spelled out the end of the world, after all. And if the world was ending, then why bother with hired duties or careers? Annie would have done the same thing.